


In Our Bedroom After the War

by supergeekytoon



Series: In Our Bedroom, After the War [1]
Category: Mission: Impossible, Mission: Impossible (Movies)
Genre: Ethan and Benji are married in this, Ethan wanted to be an astronaut, Fluff and Angst, In Retirement, M/M, Mentions of Spy life, Takes place some time after Fallout or MI8, Well Technically Spy Husbands, and they are living in retirement, but vaguely, i don't know yet, soft angst, spy boyfriends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2019-05-19
Packaged: 2020-03-07 18:27:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18878779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/supergeekytoon/pseuds/supergeekytoon
Summary: In the quiet of the dark, Ethan struggled to sleep. It was just like when he was a kid, afraid of the monsters under his bed.But he wasn't a kid now.





	In Our Bedroom After the War

**Author's Note:**

> This idea came to me after I had a lonely anxious night awake. Also My Headcanon of Astronaut! Ethan has made a return.  
> The title is a reference to the Stars song of the same name.  
> Follow me on Tumblr if you'd like- @Supergeekytoon

There was a gentle storm coming into the Wisconsin farmland. The serene summer night gave way to lightning and howling wind. But it was the thunder that had awoken Ethan from his less than restful slumber.

Sleep was a commodity for him, or it used to be. In retirement now it should have been readily accessible, but despite his hope for normalcy, it had eluded his grasp again. Benji slept soundly beside him, light snoring the only sign of human life in his husband. Benji was the better sleeper of the two by a small margin. Benji still had nightmares of course, the trauma of past missions manifested itself in the form of nightmares. But for Ethan, the fear was ever present. He had been living with a sense of apprehension since the mid-‘90s, it was foolish of him to believe that such tension would vanish overnight.

In truth, his anxiety had been present from childhood. Although his fears were far more fantastical during that time. Ethan had the classic childhood fears of monsters under the bed and of strange noises in the middle of the night.

He was far from childhood now and yet he found himself alone in the night again. He shifted carefully, getting up from the bed so as not to wake Benji and he walked down the hall to his old bedroom.

When he and Benji had been given the chance to retire, they decided to live out here in the countryside, in Ethan’s childhood home. It had been left to him when his mother passed, and he never really had a use for it until now. As he made his way to the old bedroom, he noticed the shadows that the tree branches had cast from the window. As a child, he imagined them as claws of some great beast ready to grab him in the night. Tonight, they were just branches.

His room was small, still housing his old toys and posters from boyhood. His twin bed clean and orderly with a simple quilt his mother had made him from a time before he could remember. He sat down staring at the walls, there was a telescope by his desk and a few posters of the Beatles and some star charts.

He lied down covering his eyes with his forearm.

“Maybe I should’ve become an astronaut after all.” 

He spoke to himself before going quiet to listen to the storm outside. It caused a dull anxious feeling in the pit of his stomach. But in childhood, it had calmed him, the pitter patter of rain bringing him to sleep like a gentle lullaby.

It shouldn’t have been this hard adjusting to civilian life, but the first week was not coming together at all. He barely slept and he kept working on repairs to the exterior of the house nonstop. At this rate, he’d have the actual barn done in a week.

Ethan wasn’t ready but he wanted so desperately to be ready. He spent so long yearning for this life and now that he had it, he couldn’t handle it.

What if this was taken away from him again? He thought he had an out with Julia, and that ended poorly. What if someone sought revenge? Lane was still alive of course. So many ‘what ifs?’ had paralyzed his mind. With all this time to sit in the quiet of civilian life, everything came tumbling through. All his fears, anxieties and trauma had revealed themselves. So much about life in the IMF had been, well frankly, fucked up.

When he was busy running for his life, it didn’t seem to affect him so much. Sure, he’d wake up in cold sweats, and be in constant fear but he had learned to drown it out in the noise of it all. The hectic nature of his work became routine and it was the only thing he could count on as a constant. Without that, all he had to focus on was his thoughts.

Now that he was out of the game, he wasn’t sure what to do. It was like being in those college parties, when he was young, with the room filled with strangers. He didn’t know what to do with his hands. Would they go in his pockets? Or should he have them folded across his chest?

It was all so much to consider and without the white noise to drown it out he just became a mess of anxiety. Ethan sighed heavily; he may have been out of the field, but he was still feeling the sting. When he was a child he could simply run down the hall and sneak into is parent’s bed seeking refuge. They could protect him from the monsters that lie in the shadows.

His mother would stroke his back gently between his fearful sobs.

“What did you learn today in class sweetheart?”

With his eyes tightly shut, Ethan would recount to her an interesting fact about history or science, focusing his mind away from his fear.

“Today we talked about how the Sun is the center of our universe. The earth rotates around the sun.”

“That’s very good, is there anything else you can tell me?”

“Back in the old days, people used to think that the center of the universe was earth, but those people were wrong.”

He mother would continue to ask him questions until he fell asleep, with the thoughts of monsters long gone.

Things were simpler back then when thunder made him think of the upper atmosphere and space, rather than of explosions and missions gone wrong.

He decided he preferred lying in bed with Benji snoring softly beside him than wandering around the house in the middle of the night, being alone.

He wasn’t as quiet as he thought he was when he had left, as Benji was half awake when he returned to bed.

“Did you enjoy your excursion?” Benji said softly, his voiced nearly drowned out by the thunder strike. Ethan tensed his back, the sound paralyzing him for a moment.

“Well, it was certainly __interesting.__ ” 

As he lied down, Benji kept his back turned to Ethan, allowing Ethan to wrap his arms around Benji’s waist.

“You’ve not been sleeping, have you?” Benji mumbled.

Of course, Benji knew. He always knew. Ethan gently placed his chin in the crook of Benji’s neck, smelling his scent like a familiar hoodie. Benji had always made him feel safe, even in the most intense of moments. He could never lie to him.

“It’s been hard getting used to all of this. Our home, our life. This is ours now,” Ethan shut his eyes tight, allowing himself to feel Benji’s body pressed gently against his.

“And I just, it’s so much to take in Benji. I love you so much.”

Benji’s hands moved to his waist, his thumb brushing against Ethan’s thumb in a soothing repetition.

“Our life. It sounds so nice when you say it, Ethan. Our Life, together and married, I could only dream of this.” Benji smiled fondly, recalling all they had gone through to get to this point.

Benji continued on as he spoke softly “I know it’s going to take time Ethan, but we are in this together. I love you too much to let you deal with this on your own. I want you to talk to me when you need to.”

Ethan smiled, his lips touching the nape of Benji’s neck as he spoke.

“There was a thing I used to do as a kid when I had nightmares.”

“Yeah?”

“I would talk about random facts until I fell asleep. My mother would ask me about something I learned in school and I’d tell her.”

“Sounds like something we should do. So, do you have any random facts you’d like to share?”

Ethan chuckled, “Do you know the reason why the road is the most slippery in the first five minutes of a storm? It’s because of the oil in the asphalt reacts with the rain.”

Benji held Ethan’s hand tighter, “What else do you know?” 

Ethan continued on with anything and everything until they both fell asleep, the thundering storm long forgotten. Perhaps it would take time to adjust, but Ethan had his husband by his side. And they were prepared to take it on together. Always together. But for now, they had sleep to catch up on.

A whole lifetime’s worth.

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
